Double gratitude

I was able to do Maricyasana D on both sides for the first time today. Yay!

My 38-year old body is opening up nicely. I started this yoga practice in May in New York City. Continued it over the next couple of months in Encinitas in California. And now in Mysore, India since late August.

It's such a beautiful thing to be a part of. We get up each morning at around 3.30am and start practice around 4.10am. Rest, drink a few coconuts, and then back at the house for a bit of rest and a second shower at about 6am. Six days a week.

When I got here, I could only do half of primary series, right up to Maricyasana B, which I could only do on the right side. Since then, I've completed all of primary series, but Maricyasana D on the left side has been a stronghold. It felt good to get it for the first time.

One thing that's so beautiful is the teacher (Sharath Jois) and the assistants. Especially this past month, the morning assistant has been Elise. She and I have had this beautiful thing going where each day she'd be looking forward to assisting me, especially in Utthita hasta padangustasana, and I'd be looking forward to being assisted. I was so intensely grateful to her for assisting me, and she was so grateful to witness the beauty of my practice and my hard work and how much was changing over the course of that month (her words, not mine).

And I got me thinking about this "double gratitude" thing. It's like "I'm so grateful to you", "no, I'm the one who's grateful here". It's a beatiful thing when that happens. When the thing that makes you feel good is the same thing that makes someone else feel good.

Last night, there was a bug in zenbilling. It was New Year's Eve, and it was around my bed time here in India (no big partying for me, we had to get up and practice at the regular time today on the 1st of January). But this bug was causing emails to go out to hundreds of my customer's newsletter subscribers multiple times, and I had to stop it right away, obviously. So I did. Phoebe had noticed that he'd posted about it on Facebook, too, so I commented there as well.

I was able to stop the damage and fix the culprit very quickly, and apologized. I know how embarrassing it is to unintentionally spam your customers. Some of them can get really angry, a lot of them may unsubscribe. Not what you want for new year's or at any time.

And to me it's the least I can do. I fucked up. My software had a bug. It caused a problem. Of course I'll fix it and do what I can to make it right and apologize. Immediately. And I'm grateful for being able to serve. Serving people has been a source of joy for me always.

Some of my fondest memories from university were when I was bartending at the parties. Being able to do such a simple thing, and infuse it with a sense of care and love and respect for the people you serve just makes me intensely happy. And it makes people happy, because it's not something they're used to. It's not the typical bartender attitude.

So I was really grateful for being able to serve my customer, despite the initial fuckup, and my customer was grateful for the quick response and fix.

And I get that a lot, this "double-gratitude" of me being grateful for the opportunity to serve, and my customers for the service I provide.

And it made me think: This is exactly how business should be!

Business should be a simple matter of us doing work that serves other people and makes us feel intense joy, and our customers buying and using our products and service and feeling intense gratitude to us for having poured our hearts and souls into it.

When that happens, it's magic. And that's exactly how it should be. It's how our soul wants it.